All Clear

by Connie Willis

The officer shook his head. “They still haven’t got the fires out. The whole City’s impassable.”

  The cabbie nodded and backed around. “Don’t worry,” he said to Mike. “Just because one way don’t work don’t mean another won’t, does it? I’ll get you there.”

  Mike hoped he was right. Every street they tried was either roped off or blocked by fallen masonry. A huge crater had been blown out of the middle of one lane, and in the next one over, two portable fire pumps and an ambulance had been abandoned. He was obviously going to have to walk, which meant he’d better put his socks on. He pulled them out of his pockets, took off his shoes, and began putting them on.

  “You wanted a look at her,” the cabbie called back to him. “Well, there she is.”

  Mike looked up, and there was St. Paul’s, the dome framed by the opening of the lane they were passing, and the ball and gold cross standing out clearly against the dark gray sky.

  “Not a scratch on her,” the cabbie said admiringly. “Not that Hitler didn’t try his best. Beautiful, ain’t she, sir?”

  Beautiful, yes, but at least two miles away. They’d been closer at St. Bart’s. I need to get out of this cab before we get any farther away, Mike thought, but the cathedral had disappeared as the cabbie dived back into the maze of twisting streets, turning and backing and retracing so much Mike had no idea which direction it lay in.

  And neither does he, Mike thought, tying his shoes and buttoning his jacket. He’s just driving. And meanwhile I’m running out of time.

  “Stop,” he said aloud, reaching for the door handle. “I’ll walk from here.”

  The cabbie shook his head. “It’s rainin’, guv, and you with no coat. No, I said I’d take you straight to St. Paul’s front door, and I will.”

  “No, really, I—”

  But the cabbie had already turned down a narrow alley. He nodded at the blackened buildings on either side. “Getting near it now, we are.”

  Near to where the fires had been, anyway. Whole streets were gutted, with patches still burning in spite of the rain. It looked like vids Mike had seen of London after the pinpoint. Through the charred timbers, he could see the wreckage the next street over, and the next, but no sign of St. Paul’s.

  We must be in the Barbican, he thought, or Moorgate.

  “And here we are,” the cabbie said, pulling over to the curb alongside a still-smoldering warehouse.

  There, just past it, was St. Paul’s courtyard, and beyond, the pillared west front of the cathedral. Mike fumbled in his jacket for his wallet.

  “Told you I’d get you here,” the cabbie crowed.

  The nurse must have taken his wallet. He fumbled in his trouser pockets and brought up a shilling and twopence. Oh, no, not after he’d made it to within a few hundred yards.

  “I must have lost my wallet last night, in the raid,” he stammered, searching through his pockets again. His papers weren’t there either. Or his ration book. The nurses must have locked them up for safekeeping. “I only have—”

  “You don’t owe me nothin’, guv’nor,” the cabbie said, waving the coins away, “after what your lot’s done.”

  “My lot—?”

  “You Yanks.” He held up the newspaper. The banner headline read, “Roosevelt Pledges Support to Britain.”

  “Nothing can stop us winning the war now,” the cabbie said.

  Thank you, President Roosevelt, Mike thought. You came through in the nick of time.

  “And any rate, it was worth the fare just to see for myself she’s still all in one piece,” the cabbie said. “A sight for sore eyes, ain’t she, guv?” He pointed toward the cathedral. “Looks like we’re not the only ones what wanted to take a look at the old girl.”

  He was pointing at knots of people standing in the courtyard, looking up at St. Paul’s. Mike was too far away to see if Bartholomew and Polly were among them.

  He got out of the taxi. “Thanks—for everything.”

  “The same to you, mate,” the cabbie said, and drove off.

  Mike limped up the street toward St. Paul’s, looking for Polly and Bartholomew, but he didn’t see them among the people in the courtyard. He hoped they hadn’t gone off looking for him.

  No, they wouldn’t have any idea where to look, he thought. And they know I’d try to come here. This is where they’d wait. He looked over at the porch and the broad steps where more people stood and sat. Unless Polly and Bartholomew have gone to Blackfriars to find Eileen.

  No, Polly didn’t know he’d told Eileen to wait there …

  A hand grabbed his sleeve. Mike turned, expecting it to be Polly, but it was a thin, dazed-looking man. “This is where I work,” the man said urgently, pointing at the still-standing door in the wreckage behind Mike. It hung in its frame, held up by two blackened supports. The rest of the warehouse was completely gutted. “What do I do now?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Sorry,” Mike said, trying to pull away.

  “It’s past time for them to open.” The man held up his wristwatch for Mike to look at. It read nine o’clock.

  Nine o’clock. It had taken him two and a half hours to get out of the hospital and over here. The fire watch would have gone off duty long since and gone back down to the Crypt.

  That’s where Polly and Bartholomew will be, he thought, breaking away from the man’s grasp and starting across the courtyard, picking his way over fire hoses and around ash-edged puddles.

  The man trailed after him, murmuring, “It’s gone. What do I do now?”

  Mike reached the foot of the steps. A score of people sat slumped against the steps, like the soldiers on the Lady Jane at Dunkirk, sooty, worn out, unseeing. And he’d been right. Polly was here waiting for him, sitting halfway up the steps next to two ragged children. And so was Eileen. Beside her on the step was a charred mark, like a deformed star. The incendiary.

  Eileen caught sight of him. She stood up and started down the steps to tell him what had happened, why John Bartholomew wasn’t there, but he already knew. One look at Polly’s face had told him everything.

  “I didn’t make it in time,” he said.

  Eileen shook her head. “The dean said he left an hour ago. He—”

  “The door’s locked,” the man said, clutching at Mike’s sleeve. “What do I do now?”

  “I don’t know,” Mike said, and sat down on the wet steps next to the girls. “I don’t know.”

  God rest ye merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay.

  —CHRISTMAS MESSAGE OUTSIDE THE RUINS OF

  ALL HALLOWS BARKING CHURCH, ON WHICH

  SOMEONE HAD UNDERLINED THE WORD

  “NOTHING” IN SOOT

  St. Paul’s Cathedral—30 December 1940

  POLLY SAT THERE ON THE BROAD STEPS OF ST. PAUL’S, looking at Mike standing below her and Eileen. He looked as exhausted as she felt. He was in his shirtsleeves, and there was a bandage on his arm. She wondered what had happened to his coat.

  “Bartholomew’s gone?” he repeated blankly, looking from her to Eileen. “Maybe we can still catch him. He can’t have got far in this mess. If we can find out which way he went—”

  Polly shook her head. “He took the tube.”

  “From Blackfriars? Maybe he’s not to the station yet. If we hurry—”

  “From St. Paul’s.”

  “St. Paul’s? You mean the drop’s here at the cathedral?”

  “No, he left from St. Paul’s Station.”

  “But last night it wasn’t—”

  “It’s up and running this morning,” Eileen said.

  “I bet we could catch ’im,” Alf said, and Binnie nodded.

  “We’re quick.” They stood up as if ready to dart off after him.

  Mike looked over at them and then back at Polly. “Do you think—?”

  She shook her head. “He’d been gone nearly an hour when we got here.”

  “Did you ask the fire watch if Bartholomew said where he was going?” Mike asked. “I mean, not where he w
as really going. But he might have told them where his—”

  “Yes,” she said, cutting him off before he could say “his drop” and looking pointedly over at Alf and Binnie, who were all ears. “He told them his uncle in Wales had sent for him.”

  “Did you ask them what else he said? He might have dropped some hint about where he was really going—”

  Where he was going was Oxford. “Mike—”

  “Did you ask them which train he was taking? That’ll at least tell us which direction he was heading.”

  No, it wouldn’t. St. Paul’s was only two stops away from access to every other line on the Underground. “Mike, it’s no use. He’s gone,” Polly said, but he was already striding up the steps and into St. Paul’s.

  Polly scrambled to her feet and went inside after him. He was already halfway to the transept, his footsteps echoing in the deserted nave. She called, “Half the fire watch has already gone home, and the other half’s gone to bed. Mike!” She ran after him.

  It was last night all over again—her running endlessly after a man she couldn’t catch—and she was suddenly too weary to try. She stopped and walked back down the dank, smoky nave through the charred scraps of paper that lay everywhere, the flaming orders of worship that had danced through the air last night. Now they littered the floor like black leaves.

  There was still a puddle of water from where she had doused the burning postcards, and next to it lay the half-burnt print of The Light of the World. Polly bent to pick it up. The left-hand side of the picture where the door was supposed to be was blackened and curled, and when Polly touched it, that half crumbled into flakes and fell away, so that Christ’s hand was raised to knock on nothingness.

  Polly looked at the print a long moment, then laid it gently on the desk and went outside and sat down on the broad step next to Eileen and the children, and in a moment Mike came back outside and sat down between them. “Bartholomew didn’t say anything to anybody,” he said. “He just left. I am so sorry, Polly.”

  “It’s not your fault,” she said. “You tried your—”

  “I beg your pardon,” the man whom she’d seen speak to Mike before as he got out of the taxi said. He was standing at the foot of the steps, looking beseechingly up at Mike. “Should I go home, do you think? Or should I wait here?”

  “The place he worked was destroyed last night,” Mike explained to them.

  “What do I do now?” the man said.

  I have no idea, Polly thought.

  “Stay here,” Mike said decisively. “The owners of the business are bound to show up sooner or later.”

  But what if they don’t come till it’s too late? Polly thought.

  “Thank you,” the man said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  They watched him go back down the steps and across the puddle-filled courtyard. “Helpful,” Mike said bitterly. “It’s my fault we didn’t find Bartholomew, you know. If I’d asked you about him and about St. Paul’s nearly burning down instead of assuming he’d been here at the end of the Blitz. Or seen that damned wall coming down—”

  “What wall?” Eileen asked.

  He told them how he’d been knocked unconscious and woken up in St. Bart’s.

  “You were there?” Eileen said incredulously. “At St. Bart’s?”

  We were all at St. Bart’s last night, Polly thought.

  The injured firewatcher might have been in the bed next to the unconscious Mike. Mike might have been only inches away from Mr. Bartholomew, as she had been up in the rafters of St. Paul’s, separated from him by only a wall. They had been so close.

  But everything had conspired against them, from Theodore’s refusal to leave the pantomime to the blocked streets which had kept them from getting here before he left this morning. It was as if the entire space-time continuum had been engaged in an elaborate plot to keep them from reaching John Bartholomew. Just as it had kept her and Eileen from finding each other last autumn. “How all occasions do inform against us,” she thought.

  “It isn’t your fault, it’s mine,” Eileen was saying. “If I’d listened to Mr. Bartholomew’s lecture, I’d have known he was still here, and we could have found him weeks ago. And now it’s too late—”

  “ ’Ow come you can’t go to Wales an’ get ’im?” Alf asked.

  “ ’Cause they don’t know where ’e is in Wales,” Binnie said. “And you ’eard ’im.” She pointed at Mike. “ ‘E ain’t really goin’ there. ’E only said ’e was,” and Polly was glad she’d stopped Mike from saying any more than he already had. They’d obviously been listening to every word the three of them had said. And she was almost certain they were the two delinquents she’d seen stealing the picnic basket that night in Holborn, though she hadn’t said anything to Eileen.

  “Well, if ’e ain’t in Wales, then where’s ’e gone?” Alf was asking Eileen.

  “We don’t know,” Polly said. “He didn’t tell us.”

  “I bet I could find ’im.”

  “How?” Binnie said. “You don’t even know what ’e looks like, you dunderpate.”

  “I ain’t a dunderpate. Take it back,” Alf said, and dove at Binnie. She darted away down the steps and across the forecourt, Alf in hot pursuit.

  Eileen was still blaming herself. “I should simply have told the incident officer I couldn’t take the ambulance to St. Bart’s.”

  And I shouldn’t have rushed off to St. Bart’s without finding out the injured firewatcher’s name and who’d gone with him to hospital, Polly thought. If she hadn’t, she’d have found out what Mr. Humphreys had told her a few minutes ago, that he’d helped Bartholomew put the injured man in the ambulance and then gone back up to the roofs. She could’ve told Mr. Humphreys to tell Mr. Bartholomew not to leave till they got there.

  “It’s no one’s fault,” she said.

  They couldn’t have found him no matter what they did because it had all happened already, and when he got back to Oxford, he hadn’t been bearing a message from them. It had been a hopeless enterprise from the beginning. It had all been hopeless—the attempts to contact Mike’s retrieval team and the search for Gerald.

  The door behind them opened, and Mr. Humphreys came out bearing a tray with a teapot and cups on it. “Your friend Mr. Davis said you were still out here,” he said to Polly, handing her and the others cups and saucers. “And I thought you might like some tea. It’s such a cold morning.”

  He poured out their tea, then went down the steps and over to the man who’d asked Mike what he should do and then over to Alf and Binnie, who were playing in the still-smoldering wreckage.

  He gave them biscuits and then came back. “I’m so sorry you missed your friend, Miss Sebastian,” he said. “I’ll ask Dean Matthews if he had an address where Mr. Bartholomew might be reached. Do you need assistance in getting home?”

  Yes, she thought, but you can’t help us.

  She shook her head.

  “If you need bus fare or—”

  “No,” Polly said. “We have transport.”

  “Good. Drink your tea,” he ordered. “It will make you feel better.”

  Nothing will make me feel better, she thought, but she drank it down. It was hot and sweet. Mr. Humphreys must have put his entire month’s sugar ration into it.

  She drained the cup, feeling suddenly ashamed of herself. She wasn’t the only one who’d had a bad night. Or the only one facing a frightening future. And the outlook wasn’t totally bleak. The fact that they hadn’t found Mr. Bartholomew meant that Mr. Dunworthy hadn’t betrayed them, that Colin hadn’t lied to her.

  And her actions, and Mike’s and Eileen’s, didn’t seem to have affected events. Last night had gone just as it was supposed to. St. Paul’s was still standing, and the rest of the City wasn’t. History was still on track.

  For the past two months Polly’d been terrified of finding proof they’d altered the course of the war, but now she almost wished historians were able to alter events, to alter this—the G
uildhall and the Chapter House and all those beautiful Christopher Wren churches destroyed. And all the horrors that were still to come—Dresden and Auschwitz and Hiroshima. And Jerusalem and the Pandemic and the pinpoint bomb which would obliterate St. Paul’s. To repair the whole bloody mess.

  But what could do that? The three of them had attempted all last night to find a single man and deliver a single message, to no avail. What made her think they could repair history, even if they knew how to go about it? And there was no way to know. The continuum was far too complex, too chaotic, to ensure that an attempt to avert a disaster wouldn’t lead to a worse one. And, as horrific as World War II had been, at least the Allies had won. They’d stopped Hitler, which had been an unarguably good thing.

  But at such a terrible, terrible price—millions dead, cities in ruins, lives destroyed. Including mine, she thought. And Eileen’s and Mike’s.

  She glanced over at them, sitting hunched on the steps, Eileen looking half frozen and about to cry, Mike with his arm bandaged and his foot half shot off. They looked done in, and Polly felt a wave of love for both of them. They had done all this, quite literally risked life and limb, for her because of her deadline. And they would both have sacrificed their lives if it had meant getting her safely home. Which meant the least she could do was to pull herself together.

  Mr. Humphreys had managed to, and so had London. The day after they’d watched half their city burn down around their ears, Londoners hadn’t sat there feeling sorry for themselves. Instead, they’d set about putting out the fires that were still burning and digging people out of the rubble. They’d repaired water mains and railway tracks and telephone lines, shown up at their jobs, even if where they worked was no longer there, swept up glass. Gone on.

  If they could do it, she could, too. “Once more into the breach,” she thought, and stood up and brushed the soot off her coat.

  “We need to be going,” she said. She gathered up their cups and saucers, took them inside, set them on the desk next to the half-burned print of The Light of the World, and started out, then went back to look at it again—at the lantern raised to light the nothingness which lay before it, the darkness on all sides, at Christ’s robe smeared with soot from the charred, flaking edge.